House Security Chair: Likely 'Something Will Detonate' During Olympics

An aerial view taken as a plane comes into land of the Olympic Park of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, Sunday, Feb. 2, 2014, in Sochi, Russia. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)Dmitry Lovetsky / AP

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Feb. 9, 2014, 5:40 PM GMT / Updated Feb. 9, 2014, 5:55 PM GMT

A leading House Republican said Sunday that it’s probable that “something will detonate. Something will go off” as the Olympic Games are being held in Russia.

“It's probably most likely to happen outside of the ring of steel and the Olympic village,” said House Homeland Security Committee chairman Michael McCaul of Texas in an interview on Fox News Sunday.

He said what poses the greatest threat is the location of the Sochi site “right dead center in the middle of what has been a historic battleground between Russia and the Chechen rebels that have now spun off into an Islamic or radical militant group.”

McCaul noted that the leader of the Chechen rebels Doku Umarov has called for attacks on the Olympics, “calling for attacks on civilians including women and children and then Zawahiri, the al Qaeda leader… reinforcing that threat.”

McCaul said he hoped his assessment was wrong, but “you're talking about an area of the world where suicide bombers go off all the time. And… the eyes of the world are upon these Olympics. And the Chechen extremists know this. And they want to make a global statement. They want to make a jihad statement. And what better time to do it than right now?”